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And Marcus would spend the rest of his life knowing he had lied. “No.” Marcus said firmly.
“What?” Thomas looked shocked. “I won’t plead guilty to something I didn’t do. I want a trial.”
Thomas shook his head. “Marcus, you’re making a huge mistake.” “Maybe.” Marcus said. “But it’s my mistake to make.”
Her name was Rachel Monroe, and she was an investigator with the Chicago Police Department.
But she wasn’t investigating crimes like robbery or murder. She investigated fraud, scams, and things that seemed too good or too bad to be true.
Rachel was 45 years old with short gray hair and sharp brown eyes that noticed everything.
She had been a police officer for 20 years and in that time she had learned something important.
When everyone agrees on a story, that’s usually when you should look closer. The Marcus Reed case bothered her.
Not because she thought he was innocent. The videos were clear. Hundreds of people saw what happened.
But something about the whole thing felt off. Rachel sat in her small office at the police station watching the viral videos on her computer for the 10th time.
She watched Marcus run through the crowd. She watched him grab Abigail’s dress. She watched security tackle him.
Everyone who watched these videos saw the same thing. A homeless man attacking a rich woman.
But Rachel had trained herself to watch differently. She didn’t just watch what happened. She watched everything around what happened.
She slowed down the video frame by frame and that’s when she saw it. In the background of one video just before Marcus tore the dress, Rachel saw two men in suits.
They were moving through the crowd purposefully heading straight toward Abigail Carter. Their hands were reaching into their jacket pockets.
Then Marcus attacked and the two men stopped. They froze. One of them pulled his hand out of his pocket empty.
They looked at each other. And then while everyone else was watching Marcus get tackled, these two men turned and walked away quickly.
Very quickly. Rachel sat back in her chair. “Interesting.” She said to herself. She pulled up another video this one from a different angle.